Gladiator - Philip Wylie (readnow .TXT) 📗

“Is it very painful, my man?”

Hugo was seeing that trench again⁠—the pulp and blood and hate of it. “Not very.”

Her tongue and saliva made a noise. “Don’t tell me. I know it was. I know how you all bleed and suffer.”

“Madam, it happens that my wounds were quite superficial.”

“Nonsense, my boy. They wouldn’t have brought you to a base hospital in that case. You can’t fool me.”

“I was suffering only from exhaustion.”

She paused. He saw a gleam in her eye. “I suppose you don’t like to talk⁠—about things. Poor boy! But I imagine your life has been so full of horror that it would be good for you to unburden yourself. Now tell me, just what does it feel like to bayonet a man?”

Hugo trembled. He controlled his voice. “Madam,” he replied, “it feels exactly like sticking your finger into a warm, steaming pile of cow-dung.”

“Oh!” she gasped. And he heard her repeat it again in the corridor.

“Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Jordan Shayne,” Hugo wrote. Then he paused in thought. He began again. “I met your son in Marseilles and was with him most of the time until his death.” He hesitated. “In fact, he died in my arms from the effect of the same shell which sent me to this hospital. He is buried in Carcy cemetery, on the south side. It is for that reason I take the liberty to address you.

“I thought that you would like to know some of the things that he did not write to you. Your son enlisted because he felt the war involved certain ideals that were worthy of preservation. That he gave his life for those ideals must be a source of pride to you. In training he was always controlled, kindly, unquarrelsome, comprehending. In battle he was aggressive, brilliant, and more courageous than any other man I have ever known.

“In October, a year ago, he was decorated for bringing in Captain Crouan, who was severely wounded during an attack that was repulsed. Under heavy shell fire Tom went boldly into no man’s land and carried the officer from a shell pit on his back. At the time Tom himself sustained three wounds. He was mentioned a number of times in the dispatches for his leadership of attacks and patrols. He was decorated a second time for the capture of a German field officer and three of his staff, a coup which your son executed almost single-handed.

“Following his death his company made an attack to avenge him, which wiped out the entire enemy position along a sector nearly a kilometre in width and which brought a permanent advantage to the Allied lines. That is mute testimony of his popularity among the officers and men. I know of no man more worthy of the name ‘American,’ no American more worthy of the words ‘gentleman’ and ‘hero.’

“I realize the slight comfort of these things, and yet I feel bound to tell you of them, because Tom was my friend, and his death is grievous to me as well as to you.

“Yours sincerely,

“(Lieutenant) Hugo Danner”

Hugo posted the letter. When the answer came, he was once again in action, the guns chugging and rumbling, the earth shaking. The reply read:

“Dear Lieutenant Danner:

“Thank you for your letter in reference to our son. We knew that he had enlisted in some foreign service. We did not know of his death. I am having your statements checked, because, if they are true, I shall be one of the happiest persons alive, and his mother will be both happy and sad. The side of young Tom which you claim to have seen is one quite unfamiliar to us. At home he was always a waster, much of a snob, and impossible to control. It may be harsh to say such things of him now that he is dead, but I cannot recall one noble deed, one unselfish act, in his life here with us.

“That I have a dead son would not sadden me. Tom had been disinherited by us, his mother and father. But that my dead son was a hero makes me feel that at last, coming into the Shayne blood and heritage, he has atoned. And so I honour him. If the records show that all you said of him is true, I shall not only honour him in this country, but I shall come to France to pay my tribute with a full heart and a knowledge that neither he nor I lived in vain.

“Gratefully yours,

“R. J. Shayne”

Hugo reread the letter and stood awhile with wistful eyes. He remembered Shayne’s Aunt Emma, Shayne’s bitter calumniation of his family. Well, they had not understood him and he had not wanted them to understand him. Perhaps Shayne had been more content than he admitted in the mud of the trenches. The war had been a real thing to him. Hugo thought of its insufficiencies for himself. The world was not enough for Shayne, but the war had been. Both were insufficient for Hugo Danner. He listened to the thunder in the sky tiredly.

Two months later Hugo was ordered from rest billets to the major’s quarters. A middle-aged man and woman accompanied by a sleek Frenchman awaited him. The man stepped forward with dignified courtesy. “I am Tom Shayne’s father. This is Mrs. Shayne.”

Hugo felt a great lack of interest in them. They had come too late. It was their son who had been his friend. He almost regretted the letter. He shook hands with them. Mrs. Shayne went to an automobile. Her husband invited Hugo to a café. Over the wine he became suddenly less dignified, more human, and almost pathetic. “Tell me about him, Danner. I loved that kid once, you know.”

Hugo found himself unexpectedly moved. The man was so eager, so strangely happy. He stroked his white moustache and turned away moist eyes. So Hugo told him. He talked endlessly of the trenches